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Second Thoughts on ‘Mycenaean’ Pottery in Ithaca

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Sylvia Benton
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Extract

When I wrote my report on the excavation of Polis, Ithaca, the leader of the expedition had suggested that in Ithaca, Early Bronze Age pottery had persisted till the closing phases of the Late Bronze Age, which meant that Ithaca was a backward little place well away from the broad stream of contemporary culture. I thought it possible that there was another lag after the Late Bronze Age, and I called certain vases ‘Mycenaean,’ taking fabric to be the determining factor. My paper was written in 1932, but not published till 1942, and long before then I was sure that we were both wrong. Mr. Heurtley wished to account for the presence of fifty Mycenaean sherds in an Early Bronze Age Settlement at Pilikata. It is true that no Middle Bronze Age settlement has yet been found in Ithaca. That may be our bad fortune, or the island may have been uninhabited in the centuries before 1500 B.C., as it was in the sixteenth century A.D. It seems simpler to admit disturbance by any later diggers of foundations or seekers of wells, than to postulate an iron curtain between Ithaca and both its nearest neighbours, Kephallenia and Leukas, in the Middle Bronze Age. After all, Early, Middle, and Late Bronze Age sherds were found together in Area VI at Pilikata, and no house plans have resulted; some disturbance seems inevitable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 44 , November 1949 , pp. 307 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1949

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References

1 BSA XXXIX, 1 ff. (referred to as Polis).

2 BSA XXXV, 43.

3 BSA XXXV, 14 and fig. 11.

4 BSA XXXV, 22, 23; fig. 18, no. 68. Shape as Eilmann, , AM 1933, 111, Abb. 54.Google Scholar A similar pattern is found on plates at Samos (ib., Beil. 34) and is popular on skyphoi (p. 68).

5 To be published.

6 The site is on the edge of wild country just above Polis Bay.

7 There was an undoubted persistence of Protogeometric patterns in Ithaca, in the eighth century, but the sherding potters of Aetos were never a satisfactory explanation of this phenomenon. Heurtley, , BSA XXXIII, 65.Google Scholar

8 There are of course many local styles of ‘Mycenaean’; Wace, and Blegen, , Klio, 1939, 131 ff.Google Scholar

9 I stress this point. P. Demargne in his stimulating book, La Crète dédalique, first equates sub-Mycenaean and Protogeometric (with which I sympathise) and then throws in ‘Granary Class at Mycenae’ apparently as another synonym. This is too much (pp. 96, 97).

10 Furumark (The Mycenaean Pottery, p. 8) calls it ‘Myc C: 2.’

11 Even in Athens there is the incongruity of a similar but typologically later vase appearing in an earlier category, e.g., Kerameikos, I, pl. 13, inv. 505 and inv. 526. 505 is called sub-Mycenaean, but it has a lower centre of gravity than 526 called Protogeometric; I note, too, with approval that in Kerameikos, IV, grave 112, Kerameikos, I (sub-Mycenaean) = grave 21 (Protogeometric). Graves 84 and 92 (pl. 13) including inv. 505 might well go with it.

12 See Kerameikos, I, 195 ff.

13 Contrast Kerameikos, I, pl. 67, with pl. 23.

14 BSA XXIX, pl. VI.

15 BSA XXXIX, pl. 6, nos. 25, 26; p. 11, nos. 25–31, and many other ‘high feet.’

16 BSA XXXIII, 44, fig. 17; see below. There is evidence that the ‘cairns’ may be collapsed houses.

17 Ib., fig. 10. Common in Early Protogeometric, see Kerameikos, I, pl. 63. Both patterns and shape are further advanced than Kerameikos, I, pl. 23.

18 The reconstructions on pp. 41 and 42 (Aetos) are made on insufficient evidence and are probably too broad.

19 Sub-Mycenaean: Kerameikos, I, pl. 27.

20 Protogeometric: Ib., pl. 47; BSA XXIX, pl. VI, 13; Hall, E., Vrokastro, pl. XXVII, 2, found with a Protogeometric oinochoe.Google Scholar

21 E.g., BSA XXV, pl. VII.

22 Some of these come very close to the patterns at Athens. Cf. BSA XXXIII, pl. 3 with Kerameikos, I, pl. 51.

23 Furumark, The Mycenaean Pottery, No. 276, fig. 17, p. 63.

24 My footnote, Polis, p. 13, n. 6, says that cups in Cyprus (the majority of which have conical feet) look Protogeometric, as indeed they do. Mr. Daniels dated his material too high, and the reference supports my present position, though MrDaniels', ringed kylix AJA XLI, pl. IV.Google Scholar 54 is rounder and therefore typologically earlier than the Polis kylikes.

25 Cf. the decoration of inv. 2013, Kerameikos, IV, pl. 8, grave 40.

26 The example quoted by MrHeurtley, from Olympia (BSA XXXIII, 63, n. 14)Google Scholar has small rings and is, I think, a Minyan stem. Furtwängler seems to have thought so too (Olympia, IV, 199, no. 1285).

27 As the pattern on Polis, pl. 9e is invisible I give a description. A central ornament like that on f next door, between dicing. The St. Andrew's cross is, however, black between reserved lines. Cf. Kerameikos. I, pl. 49, foot.

28 With one handle they may be Granary class, but they may also be later; Polis, 46–51 a, p. 13, pl. 6.

29 The vase 5 on Polis, pl. 4 is of good fabric, but the stripe is unusually wide. Mr. Dunbabin quotes a vase in Corinth Museum; see also Stubbings, , BSA XLII, pl. 9Google Scholar, and Kerameikos, I, pl. 20, 439.

30 Kerameikos, I, pl. 73.

31 BSA XXXV, 32–3.